Durand Union Station
P.O.Box 106
200 Railroad Street
Durand, MI 48429
Office Hours:
Tuesday to Friday
9 AM to 5 PM
Telephone:
(989)288-3561
Fax:
(989)288-3494
Email:
Durand Union Station
Everything was about in readiness for the Wallace parade this morning
when Hazel, whose mate was killed in the wreck at Durand balked and
refused to go with the procession. She ran back into the tent where Jip,
the elephant injured at Durand, stood.
Hazel's keeper, in an endeavor to make her obey, ran his spear through
her ear. This the elephant did not seem to like, and quick as a flash
she grabbed her keeper in her trunk and knocked him to the ground.
She was then securely chained to a stake, but in her anger,
easily broke away.
The crowd of boys and others in the tent, thinking there would be
things of a serious nature doing, rushed out of the place and took
to tall timber. Soon afterwards the unruly beast was quieted and no
further attempt made to take her out.
Jip, the huge elephant on top of whom the rest of the menagerie was
piled in the accident at Durand, looks as though she were getting
along all right. She seems restless, shifting her standing position
every few minutes and now and then taking a mouth full of hay, but
most of the time throwing it towards the roof and scattering it
about on the ground. [8/10/03]
Wallace Circus Wreck
Durand - 7 August 1903
W.L. Cone, the steward of the company, a big, jolly fellow, lay in the further end of the medical ward, partly propped up on his pillows. His back is sprained and he is badly bruised, but there is plenty of life remaining.
Wrecked Animal Car
"Well, sir, I don't know how it happened that out of the three
who escaped death in the last sleeper, two of us, Burt McGrath and
myself, are fat men, but such is the case," said he. "The trouble
was that there were too many hoodeos aboard."
Cone looked over into the next cot, where a colored man, Joseph Anderson,
lay, and the latter rolled his eyes apprehensively, but there was
nothing personal meant by the remark.
"We have two hunchbacks with us this trip, and that is too many,"
went on the speaker. "Do I mean it? Of course I do. I am perfectly
willing to admit that I am superstitious. I was sleeping in an upper
berth near the rear end of the car, and when the crash came, the shock
turned me over on my stomach, and something began to shove me forward.
I grabbed a beam, and that pulled me still further, and out of danger.
When the movement finally ceased, one leg was caught somewhere in the
wreckage, but I was able to pull it loose and walk out over the splinters.
The first fellow I saw was McGrath, who had occupied a lower berth
across the aisle from me.
"What's the matter?" he yelled. "Why, I guess we are mostly split up
into kindling wood," I answered.
"I'm through with the show-business," declared Anderson, emphatically,
as he rolled his eyes again. "This is the second wreck I have been in
with this company, and the next time it will be the undertaker that
will get me, not the hospital.
Of quite a different mind was Joe Patterson, an 18-year-old Driver.
"Such things as that don't take my nerve at all," he declared.
"Sleep on the train after this! Well, I guess so. If you went to bed
at midnight and got up at half-past 5 or 6 you would sleep, no matter
what was going to happen. But what I don't understand is, how I got
under a car, when I went to sleep in a bunk. I did not hear the crash,
I did not wake up until I found myself lying on my stomach and being
dragged along feet first. Then I paddled crab fashion with both hands,
and managed to keep up. Pretty soon one leg swung loose and I went over
on my side. It was then that my face got all scraped up. An instant
later the car stopped. I jerked loose, crawled out and walked down the
line. After that everything is a blank, and I don't know how what
happened until I came to and found myself in the car where they were
helping the wounded."
Where The Men Were Killed
"No, the cars were not old ones," broke in Burt McGrath, in answer
to a general question. "They were two tourist sleepers given to Wallace
by the Chicago & Eastern Illinois railroad in exchange for the sleeper
that was wrecked at Shelbyville, but there is not a car in existence
that could have stood that shock without going to pieces."
W. H. Howe, a driver, aged 38, was once thought to be dead, but he is
now in the hospital and apparently on the road to recovery. "I was
pinned down so I could not move," said he. "The wreckage above shut
off my breath, and I was almost unconscious when I heard someone say:
'No use trying to get that one, he is all jammed to pieces.' Then,
though I was half dazed, I managed to wig wag with my boot, and that
brought help. And all I got was a good squeeze."